This is My World...

Inside of me, a battle rages on daily. I'll take your hand and walk you through just a part of a day in a "Low." Perhaps the defining things that separate a person who simply experiences a moment in their life of confusion or low self-esteem or the desire to just sit in a corner and not be near anyone is that those things are not moments in time for someone with Bipolar disorder. They are days. They are weeks and months that run together like a steady stream of water that threatens to drown them. They are feelings of worthlessness and time after time of feeling as if one could carry the world on their shoulders and they Try to do just that. Euphoria so huge and so all encompassing that the body shudders at the high! Excitement because you read a page in a book and made no mistakes because if you did, something would happen to someone you love. Games you play out in your mind but always leaving an out in case you fail.
The lows that follow that fantastic high that crumbles even your ability to make the simplest decisions. Crying in ways most could not imagine. Sobbing so hard that you nearly pass out and no way to stop until your mind is finished. Walking away from such a cry and smiling as if it didn't happen at all. Laughing as you go to fill your water glass only to return to the same room, with the same people, wanting them all gone. Closed up as if they have done something and yet you can not explain to them they have done nothing. You simply had a massive mood swing. They in turn get down over the moment and in an instant, you are smiling again. And now, you try so hard to make them smile again but they do not walk through mood swings like you do. Now your whole world collapses again because you have the terrible guilt of ruining their night. Just another reason to tear yourself apart.
Waking up and needing to tell yourself over and over why you should finish your day out. Certain that there is little reason to even be here because you have nothing to give to those that love you. Your mind reminding you of all the things you need to start or finish. You write them all down or process them through your head and take most of the day truly doing absolutely nothing because your mind could not choose one single thing to do. Dishes half washed that now will wait until tomorrow or 3 a.m. when you are up wandering through the house. Novels with beginnings that sit for months, the characters and their story played out in your head as you drive down the highway. A reality only to you and that is why you write so perfectly. Your words are as alive as you are. They are happening as you are writing. Life and writing are one and the same for you.Imagination becomes reality and reality becomes something just a little less than imagination. And then... your two worlds collide and the mess it leaves behind is scattered and running amok in your head.
You wish only to know some peace and to feel the comfort of those you know as "Safe places." A person, a chair, whatever it is that gives you the ability to simply be.
Nine o'clock at night, you have done nothing and Now you feel the energy surge and want to do it all. Now it is dark and most are preparing to sleep for the night. You???? You are just beginning another part of your worlds day. A day that will last until you are so tired that you collapse. Not a desire to sleep but a no choice sleep. Your body and mind are exhausted and so you sleep. But only for a couple of hours and then, your whole day begins again. Perhaps I should say, continues, as they never really ever end.
Today, you feel connected and you sit to write. Eight chapters unfold from your mind onto your screen and it is exactly what you want. Never to think first but simply writing. Word after word, sentence after sentence flows and you have managed to stay locked up inside your novel. nothing from outside was aloud in today. You simply kept your mind so full that the racing was kept at bay, at least for today. A high surfaces and you are connected enough today to KNOW that a terrible Low WILL follow it. But for now, you will smile and your loved ones will enjoy you, for as long as they are allowed to.
Welcome to my world. A world filled with more things than I can put in one blog. More will come but it may be tomorrow or perhaps... I don't know when. I may tell you the good things that can be derived from this disorder. This is my world. You are welcome to it any time. Unless i change my mind the instant I click "publish."

Fate or Destiny... you decide.

I wonder how many people believe in Fate. I know that by clicking you can read the definition but I do want to steal one little part. {an event (or a course of events) that will inevitably happen in the future}. Now the word destiny follows through where ever you look up the word fate. The two walk hand in hand with each other and yet to me, they are not really the same thing.
Destiny, to me, is a point that you achieve, after much strife and many trials. It is something that you reach for, that you believe in your heart is yours simply because. "He wrote with a passion, therefor he was destined to be an author." Fate, to me is something totally different. Fate is something that some believe in and others do not. It is an argued debate that goes back and forth from person to person. Fate to me is an event that happens and would have happened no matter what you did. If a man is fated to die at 25 then he will die at 25. If it is his/her destiny, because of his families medical background or where they live in the world to die young then fate doesn't play a role in it. Fate would be if the person did not live in a country filled with death but while traveling to a destination, your plane lands in a bad place. You are infected with some illness that you would have never seen in your country. It takes your life... That to me is fate. It stepped in where it was Unexpected and that is fate.
My wife was given 5 years to live. Had she died then, it would have been something that her illness had made it destined to happen. She lived, much to any medical reasoning's explanation, for 24 more years. That to me was Fate or in another name, God, stepped in and changed the ending. My father was told that he would not live for another year because of his heart and life style. He stopped smoking, changed his diet and his living, took better care of his body and 25 years later, he is still with us. Though "destined" to die because of his life, he chose to change things and in essence, changed his destiny.
I do believe we have the power within ourselves to change our destiny but I do not think we can change Fate. If we die, then we were to die then. Fate, or To me God, chooses that time. So would my father have lived 25 more years and be 76 years old right now if he had NOT changed things to be healthier? Fate has a plan for us all and so I wonder. It gives food for thought and also gives reasons for changing things in our life to try and extend it for as long as we are allowed.
"The Titanic was ill-fated..." I don't think so. It was human error that caused the great ship to sink. Fate only took those that didn't survive... Food for thought on a cold January Day... Always, Darrel